If you've been looking for a way to use up scraps of upholstery fabric and old cereal boxes, this tutorial is for you. I show how I make fabric tags for junk journals — layering fabric, book pages, tea-dyed paper, and a small focal image onto a cereal-box base, then sewing everything together with a straight stitch. The result is a sturdy, vintage-feeling tag that can go straight into a journal or be bundled for sale.
What we cover
Making a set of fabric-topped junk journal tags from scratch — cutting tag shapes from cereal boxes, sewing on upholstery fabric with deliberate fraying at the edges, layering in book pages and a focal image, backing everything with tea-dyed paper, and finishing with a ribbon or fabric topper through a punched hole. I also walk through why I sequence the steps the way I do, which matters if you're making these to sell or give away.
What you'll learn
How to use a cereal box and plastic card templates to cut consistent tag shapes — I keep a few different sizes of trimmed plastic cards on hand so I can trace and cut quickly without remeasuring each time. Some of my tags are narrow, some are wide; the template approach means I can vary them without losing consistency.
Why I attach fabric before shaping the final tag — I glue the fabric to the cereal-box base while the base is still in its rough-cut rectangle, sew around the shape, then cut the excess. That sequence keeps everything aligned and makes the sewing step much easier than trying to sew a fully trimmed tag.
How to sew a straight stitch around a fabric-covered tag, including:
- Sewing from the back side of the tag so any unevenness in the stitch line stays hidden under the tea-dyed paper layer you add later
- Staying as close to the edge of the cereal-box base as possible to minimise how much of the base could show if the fabric frays back
- Leaving a margin of fabric beyond the stitching line so fraying stops at the thread and never reaches the cardboard underneath
Why I layer book pages between the fabric and the focal image — it's not just decorative. That extra layer brings the focal point forward visually and adds a dimension the fabric alone doesn't give. I tear an uneven edge, ink it lightly, and fold the bottom of the page over the lower edge of the tag so the base stays protected when the tag slides in and out of a journal pocket.
How to attach a focal image through multiple sewing passes — I add the book page first and sew it down, then add the image on top and sew around that separately. It means the stitching around the image doesn't cut across the book page layer beneath it, and you can see the difference up close. If you're selling these, that detail matters.
How to back the tag with tea-dyed paper in a final sewing pass — the back of a tag after several rounds of sewing is messy: visible thread ends, raw cardboard edges, glue residue. A piece of tea-dyed paper sewn on last hides all of it and gives you a clean writing surface at the same time.
How to punch through thick layered tags and attach a fabric topper, including:
- Using a heavy-duty hole punch or silent setter when standard punches won't go through the combined layers of cardboard, fabric, and paper
- An alternative: sewing the topper directly to the top of the tag if you don't have a tool that will punch cleanly through
- Threading and tightening a looped ribbon or fabric strip correctly — pulling from behind the loop rather than the tails
Why I work in a production-line sequence when making a batch — cutting all the bases first, then gluing all the fabric, then sewing all the fabric, and so on. When you're making four or more tags at once, moving through one step across the whole batch is faster and keeps you in flow better than completing one tag fully before starting the next.
Tips & gotchas
If you're not sewing your layers down, a glue stick isn't enough — use a proper strong craft glue and work it all the way to the edges. Glue stick is fine here only because the stitching is doing the real holding work.
With thin fabric, apply glue in a thin layer. Upholstery fabric is dense enough that glue doesn't bleed through, but lighter fabrics will show the glue on the surface if you're too generous.
Leave a small margin of fabric past the sewing line when you trim. That margin frays, yes — but it frays to the thread and stops there. If you trim right to the cereal-box edge, the fraying can pull back far enough to expose the cardboard underneath.
When you add the book page, fold its bottom edge over the lower edge of the tag before you sew. That fold seals the base of the tag so it doesn't catch or tear when the tag moves around inside a journal.
For the ribbon topper: once you've threaded it through the punched hole and made your loop, tighten it by pulling from behind the loop — not by pulling the tails. Pulling the tails on a bulky fabric strip just tightens the knot unevenly. And keep the topper short enough that it sits up when you pick the tag up; if it's too long it flops down over the front, which isn't the look you want.
One last thing about imperfection: handmade things have it, and that's fine. What you're avoiding isn't imperfection in general — it's the kind that signals the work wasn't cared for. A tiny buckle in the paper is acceptable. Edges that are pulling away, or stitching that's clearly sliding off the tag, aren't. When I'm making a set of these to sell or include in a journal someone's going to buy, I'm thinking about how they'll hold up when a person picks them up and looks at them closely. That's the bar I'm working to.
They also open up into a lot of directions from here: different fabric textures, collaged focal points from magazines or old book illustrations, ruffled paper toppers instead of ribbon. I use paper ruffles as tag toppers sometimes too, and I have a separate tutorial on those if you want to go that route. The underlying method — cereal-box base, fabric, layered paper, sealed back — stays the same regardless of how you finish them.
